![]() The moon will change various shades during different stages of a total lunar eclipse, morphing from an initial grayish to orange and amber. What happened before the Big Bang? (opens in new tab) ![]() What if Earth shared its orbit with another planet? (opens in new tab) ![]() Do other planets have solar eclipses? (opens in new tab) ![]() In that way, the longer-wavelength orange and red light bathe the moon's surface. Even so, the sun's light first passes through Earth's atmosphere and during that trek, particles in the atmosphere preferentially scatter the shorter-wavelength blue light. Even though Earth is way bigger than the sun, the light rays are able to bend around the edges of our planet before being reflected onto the moon. Specifically, wavelengths of light scatter the most off teensy particles that are about one-tenth the wavelength of the light (opens in new tab) or smaller.ĭuring a total lunar eclipse, the sun, Earth and moon are perfectly lined up so that our Blue Planet blocks the sun's rays from hitting the moon. A phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering causes some wavelengths of light to scatter more than others. (Image credit: Shutterstock) (opens in new tab)Īs for why the moon looks red, it has to do with the way that light scatters. A lunar eclipse happens when the sun, moon and Earth are lined up in that exact order. ![]()
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